The trade off is that then the old drag down the kids in terms of careers, where they can live, time that might be otherwise invested in children, etc. One sid

The trade off is that then the old drag down the kids in terms of careers, where they can live, time that might be otherwise invested in children, etc. One side of my family is Chinese/Jamaican and the other White, so both cultural sets of values exist in my family and both sets of grandparents are worried about being a burden later on and while the polite thing to say is that they aren't, they genuinely are, especially if you don't have a lot of kids or they don't live nearby. My Chinese/Jamaican grandfather had to leave his mother behind in Jamaica to build a life here in Canada and she supported that decision as it meant breaking the cycle of poverty for good. None of her descendants (at least for a while) would own nothing but two old dining chairs.